Hot Our Of The Oven
The day after the Madigans brought their bread-baking care package to Nyel, he was feeding his sourdough starter… Two days later, he baked. Just one loaf (more’s the pity) but it was “a little bit experimental,” he said. It was his third time trying a particular no-knead recipe and he wasn’t about to waste time or ingredients if it failed. Not that the first two trials were failures, but he is SUCH a perfectionist.
The problem hadn’t been in the finished product. Far from it! So I probably hadn’t been as sympathetic as I could have been. (I was much too busy scarfing down bread-hot-out-of-the-oven-and-dripping-with-melting-butter!) The difficulty had been in the process, with bread dough so sticky he could hardly handle it.
Michael was familiar with the recipe. “You can add as much as 10 grams more flour,” he told Nyel. Plus, he suggested being very liberal with the flour on counter and hands as Nyel was forming the loaf… The bread turned out perfectly! There’s nothing like getting advice from an expert.
I know it’s a bit of a quantum leap, but I was wondering if the protesters on Capitol Hill in Seattle would have been so destructive if they could have had a few pieces of that fabulous loaf — as in “let them eat bread” and having enough for the multitudes as in the loaves and fishes story in the Good Book.
And, I’d definitely like to share with Seattle’s Mayor Jenny Durkan and with our Governor Jay Inslee. They each deserve a loaf and more for their tweets in response to the threats by the prez. “Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker!” Durkan tweeted. And in a tweet using one of Trump’s own mis-spellings, Inslee said, “A man who is totally incapable of governing should stay out of Washington state’s business. ‘Stoop’ tweeting.”
Let them all eat bread, I say. Nyel’s sourdough perfection! It would mellow things right out as breaking bread together is meant to do.
Need the recipe
My way of coping with the virus was to take the ‘Get a dog or make sourdough bread’ choice was the later. I’ve probably made 8 loaves but I’m never happy. I looked on line and even joined the FB SD group. I was ‘sourdough shamed’ [my term]
Hope all is well. I was counting on another visit this summer but who knows?